Mike Farmer, founder of Web search developer Leap2, was the first startup to put down roots in the neighborhood that would become known as Kansas City’s Startup Village.

Farmer is cheered by the vibrant community that continues to grow around him. Still, he can’t say where the concept may be headed, or if it’s even useful to try to know.

“I’m not sure there is a goal,” Farmer said of the Village, which he likened to a new American frontier. “Go back to the foundation of a community – when frontiersmen came to town, was there an agenda? How big was this going to get? How far would it go?

“If there is a direction to the Village – and from that direction, you can establish a goal – then what it is doing is fundamentally calling into question the traditionally top-down, highly organized, competitive environment of economic development.”

At 44, Farmer is a generation older than many if not most of the people seeking to invent the next big thing in the Village. And he’s learning from them.

“I grew up pre-Twitter, pre-Facebook, where you had secure email to make sure your message got to just one person,” Farmer said. “But this social media generation, it’s all about openness, working together, paying it forward. To me, that’s the most fascinating thing about it.

“It’s enabling the free flow of information, but it’s a way of thinking. The digital world is driving the way of thinking in the analog world, fundamentally. It’s ‘you put it out there’ constantly. Walls have been broken down.”

For more about Startup Village, be sure to read this month’s lead feature.